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NAB M. P. Shah All India Talking Book Centre
History
In 1963 the Talking Book project ― now known as the M. P. Shah All India Talking Book Centre ― was set up with the help of equipment presented by the Vocational Rehabilitation Administration, Department of Health, Education and Welfare, United States Government. Initially, the Centre recorded on spools, English, Gujarati, Hindi and Marathi magazines, books of general interest and textbooks for college students, which blind users listened to on huge multi-track players that NAB provided them. |
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Our Achievements
Over the years, as recording hours increased with rise in demand for recorded literature, the Centre started functioning in a more professional manner. In the 70s, change was brought about in the recording technique by switching over to the standard cassette recorders and compact cassettes.
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Blind Children studying with the help of Talking Books. |
Making remarkable progress through the 80s and 90s - both qualitatively and quantitatively - the Centre has emerged as one of the biggest sources of production and distribution of audio material for the blind in India.
Today we have three acoustically designed studios where, recording is carried out in two shifts, churning out books on cassettes and CDs in several Indian languages besides English. This literature includes novels, classics, biographies, travelogues, short stories, textbooks prescribed by various Education Boards and Universities in Maharashtra and reference books recommended for professional courses and competitive examinations. |
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Recording Studios |
Ever since our Studios were equipped with Digital Recording facilities in 2007, books are being recorded directly in digital format. Alongside we have undertaken Analogue-Digital conversion that is books already on cassettes are being digitized and made available to member on MP3 CDs.
The Talking Book Library |
Our Talking Book Library houses more than 5,500 titles - in nine Indian languages as well as English. Similarly, over 900 titles are available for circulation on MP3 CDs. In addition, we maintain two to three copies of each of the general books and multiple copies of textbooks to meet the demands of students. On any given working day, around 40,000 cassettes are in circulation all over India. Some expatriate Indians also solicit our services.
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Around 1000 members of the library benefit through this service at a very nominal annual subscription of Rs.50 per annum. Members also pay a refundable deposit of Rs.10 per cassette on textbooks (or purchase them at Rs.20 per CD) and Rs.30 per cassette/CD on recreational literature.
| How you can help us |
• You may like to sponsor a title of approximately 8 cassettes by contributing Rs.7,000 • If you have good voice and inflections, you may be interested in volunteering to read at our studios • You may like to offer your precious time for maintenance work of the library. |
Talking Book Library Collection
List of English Books
List of Gujarati Books
List of Hindi Books
List of Marathi Books
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